Sports Cycle

Are you often confused by some of the things your bikers friends say ? Like any hobby or geek-o-meter, there are common motorcycle terms that we all come to learn, and then there is some of the more bizarre slang you can spend a lifetime behind the engine never understanding. Below we’ve compiled a collection of common Motorcycle and Bikers slang to help lift the veil on their mystery.

A

ABS (Antilock Brake System) : The ABS detects when a wheel is not turning and releases pressure to the brake on that wheel, preventing a skid.

Aftermarket : The sector of the market that sells parts and accessories other than OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers).

Airheads : A term for older, air-cooled BMW Boxer Twins.

Ape hangers : A term coined at the height of the custom-bike movement to describe tall handlebars that forced the rider to reach skyward to grasp the controls, making the rider adopt an ape-like posture.

B

Bagger : A motorcycle equipped with saddlebags and other touring amenities.

Belt-drive system : A final-drive system that transmits the power to the rear wheel via a drive belt.

Big Twins : The engines in the larger Harley-Davidson bikes.

Bobbers : The custom bikes American riders built after World War II where the owners cut off, or “bobbed,” much of the bodywork.

Bottom end : The bottom part of the engine, where the crankshaft and (usually) the transmission reside.

Boxer : A two-cylinder engine with the pistons opposing each other, resembling fists flying away from each other.

Brakes (disc and drum) : Disc brakes are located on the front tire and use stationary calipers that squeeze pads against the discs that rotate with the wheel. Drum brakes, on the other hand, are located on the rear wheel and use horseshoe-shaped brake shoes that expand against the inner surface of the wheel hub.

C

Café chop : Converting a stock motorcycle into a café racer is known as doing a café chop on a bike.

Café racer : Motorcycles modified to resemble racing motorcycles from the 1950s and 60s. They are called “café racers” because their owners supposedly raced from café to café in London, where the bikes first appeared in the 1960s.

Cam (camshaft) : A rod with lobes on it that opens the valves.

Carbon fiber : A high-tech material favored in many motorcycle applications because it is extremely strong, light, and inexpensive. The distinctive look of carbon fiber has become trendy.

Carburetor : A device that mixes fuel with air to create the fuel charge burned in the combustion chamber.

Cases : The two clam-shell-like halves in the bottom end of the engine surrounded by a metal shell.

Centerstand : A stand that supports the motorcycle in an upright position.

Centerstand Tang : A small lever attached to the centerstand.

Chain drive system : A final-drive system that transmits the power to the rear wheel via a chain.

Chassis : The combined frame and suspension on a motorcycle.

Chopper : Once used to describe a custom motorcycle that had all superfluous parts “chopped” off in order to make the bike faster, a chopper today is a type of custom bike that usually has an extended fork, no rear suspension, and high handlebars.

Clip-ons : Handlebars that attach directly to the fork tubes, rather than to the top yoke, that hold the fork tubes together.

Clutch : A device that disengages power from the crankshaft to the transmission, allowing a rider to change gears.

Combustion chamber : The area at the top of the cylinder where the fuel charge burns and pushes the pistons down.

Coming on the cam : The term used when a four stroke reaches its powerband.

Coming on the pipe : The term used when a two stroke reaches its power band.

Connecting rods : These attach the crankshaft to the pistons via the eccentric journals, and the rods’ up-and-down movement is converted into a circular motion through the design of the journals.

Constant-radius turn : A turn with a steady, nonchanging arc. In a decreasing-radius corner, the arc gets sharper as you progress through the curve, while in an increasing radius corner, the arc becomes less sharp.

Contact patch : The area of your tire that actually contacts the road while you ride.

Counterbalancer : A weight inside an engine that cancels out some of the engine’s vibration.

Countersteering : The way you use the handlebar to lean the bike into a turn. If you want to turn right, you push the handlebars to the left, and vice versa.

Cowlings : A piece of bodywork that covers the engine area.

Crotch rocket : A term some people use to refer to sportbikes.

Crowns : The tops of the pistons.

Cycle : The up-and down motion of the piston. The terms cycle and stroke are used interchangeably when referring to engine types.

Cylinder block : The hunk of aluminum with holes bored through it, inside which the pistons move up and down.

Cylinders : The hollow shafts in the top end of an engine inside which internal combustion occurs.

D

Decreasing-radius corner : A turn where the arc gets sharper as you progress through the curve.

Dirtbike : Bikes intended for off-road use that aren’t legal to ride on public roads. Sometimes the term pure-dirt is used to distinguish a dirtbike from a dual-sport motorcycle.

Discs : These are the metal rotors the caliper presses the pads against to brake.

Double-cradle frame : A bike frame with two steel tubes circling the engine from the front and “cradling” it.

Dresser : A motorcycle set up for long-distance touring.

Dual sport : Street-legal motorcycles with varying degrees of off-road capabilities. Also called dual-purpose motorcycles.

Eccentric journals : These are used to attach the connecting rods to the crankshaft (also called metal shafts).

Ergonomics : The science used to design devices, systems, and physical conditions that conform to the human body. A prime consideration when designing a motorcycle.

Evolution (Evo) : When Harley-Davidson began using aluminum to build its cylinder jugs, it called this new engine the Evolution.

F

Fairings : The devices mounted at the front of a motorcycle to protect the rider from the elements. These range from simple, Plexiglas shields to complex, encompassing body panels.

False neutral : When you fail to engage gears and the transmission behaves as though it is in neutral, even though it isn’t.

Flat cylinders : Found in the flat-four- and flat-six-cylinder engines used in Honda’s Gold Wings, the cylinders are arranged in a flat, opposing configuration.

Foot paddling : The way an unskilled rider “walks” his or her motorcycle around at low speeds.

Forks : The metal tubes holding the front wheel to the rest of the motorcycle.

Four-cylinder bike : A motorcycle with four cylinders.

Fuel-injection system : This mixes the fuel-air charges and forcibly injects them into the combustion chambers, unlike carburetors, which rely on the vacuum created by the engine to draw the charges into the combustion chambers.

G

Garbage wagon : A scornful term used by some outlaw bikers to describe touring bikes.

Gearhead : A person with a strong interest in all things mechanical; a motorcyclist.

Gearset : A set of gears within a bike’s transmission.

H

High siding : Pitching a bike over away from the direction you are turning. The most dangerous kind of crash.

Horsepower : A measure of an engine’s strength.

Hydroplane : When your tires start to float on top of water, causing them to lose contact with the road’s surface.

I

Increasing-radius corner : A turn where the arc becomes less sharp as you go through the curve.

Inline six : An engine with six cylinders in a row.

Inline triple : An engine with three cylinders placed in a row.

Iron Butt Rally : The most grueling long-distance motorcycle rally in the world. To finish, the rally requires that you ride at least 10,000 miles in 11 days.

K

Knucklehead : A term for Harley-Davidson’s first overhead-valve Big Twin, introduced
in 1936.

L

L-twin engine : A V-twin engine with its cylinders splayed apart at a 90-degree angle, which creates a smoother-running engine. These engines can either be placed transversely (crosswise), or longitudinally (lengthwise) in the motorcycle frame.

Lane splitting : Riding between lanes of traffic on a freeway.

Laying the bike down : A crash where you slide down on one side of the bike.

Leviathan : Used to describe big, multicylinder dual sports.

Lugging the engine : Letting the RPMs fall below the engine’s powerband.

M

Manual transmission : A device consisting of a set of gears (the gearset), that alter the final-drive ratio of a vehicle to enable an operator to get up to speed. Automatic transmissions do not have gearsets but rather use a complex system of fluid and metal bands to vary the final-drive ratio of a vehicle.

N

Naked bikes : Bikes without any type of fairing.

O

Oilheads : Newer, air-and-oil-cooled BMW Boxer engines.

Open-class : When referring to street-legal sportbikes, open-class designates motorcycles with engines that displace more than 800 cubic centimeters of volume.

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) : The companies that build the bikes.

Orphan bikes : Rare bikes that are no longer in production.

Otto cycle : The four-stroke engine is sometimes called the Otto cycle, in honor of its inventor, Otto Benz.

Overbore :When you overbore your engine, you drill out the cylinders and then put oversized pistons in the holes, effectively increasing your engine capacity.

Overhead cam system : A system where the cam rides directly on top of the valve
stems.

P

Panhead : A term for Harley-Davidson’s second-generation overhead-valve Big Twin, introduced in 1948.

Parallel-twin engine : A two-cylinder engine with its cylinders placed side-by-side in an upright position.

Pistons : The slugs moving up and down within the cylinders.

Powerband : A certain RPM (revolutions per minute—how many times per minute an engine’s crankshaft spins around) range in which an engine makes most of its power.

Primary drive : A drive chain connecting the engine’s crankshaft to its transmission.

Production motorcycles : The bikes manufacturers produce to sell to the general public, rather than bikes built specifically for racers.

Pushrod system : In a pushrod system, the cams are located below the cylinder heads and push on the rocker arms by moving long rods, called the pushrods.

R

Radial : When used to describe a tire, refers to the way the cords of a tire are constructed. While radial tires have long been used with automobiles, they are just now being used on motorcycles.

Rain grooves : Channels cut into a road’s surface to help water run off the road during a rainstorm.

Repair link : A link in some motorcycle chains that can be disassembled for chain repair.

Repli-racers : Hard-edged sportbikes. These motorcycles are characterized by riding positions that tuck the rider into an extreme crouch, forcing him or her to practically lay down on the fuel tank.

Revolutions per minute (RPM) : The number of times the crankshaft spins around each minute. Often, the term revs is used, especially in conversation.

Riding two up : Carrying a passenger on your bike.

Rocker arms : Devices that work like upside-down teeter totters and push on the valve stems.

Rubber-mounted : Rubber-mounted engines use a system of rubber cushions and/or jointed engine mounts to isolate engine vibration from the rider.

S

Shaft drive system : A final-drive system that transmits the power to the rear wheel
via a drive shaft.

Shaft jacking : Shaky or bumpy motion created by the impact of acceleration and then fed back into the bike’s frame.

Shovelhead : A term for Harley’s third-generation overhead-valve Big Twin engine,
introduced in 1966.

Sidecars : Small carriages attached to the side of a motorcycle to provide extra carrying
capacity.

Sissy bar : The backrest put behind the passenger’s portion of the saddle.

Snicking : The act of shifting a well-functioning transmission is often called snicking, because that’s the sound the action makes. A transmission that doesn’t snick into gear is described as sloppy-shifting.

Solid-mounted : A bike with a solid-mounted engine has the engine bolted directly to the frame tubes.

Splitting the cases : The metal shell surrounding the bottom end is composed of two clam-shell-like halves, called cases. Taking these apart to repair the motor is called splitting the cases. See also bottom end.

Sport tourer : A motorcycle that combines the comfort and carrying capacity of a touring bike with the handling and power of a sportbike with larger fairings and hard, lockable luggage.

Sportbike : A motorcycle designed for optimal speed and handling characteristics, often with extensive bodywork.

Springer fork : Springer-type forks use large, exposed springs to dampen the impact of road irregularities.

Squid : Someone who rides a sportbike on the street as if he or she were on a racetrack.

Steering geometry : The geometrical relationship between the motorcycle frame, the angle of the fork, and the position of the front tire.

Streetfighter : A bare-bones sportbike, stripped of all extraneous body work (also called a “hooligan” bike).

Stroke : The up-and-down motion of the piston.

Suspension : The forks, shocks, and to a degree, tires, of a motorcycle. The springs and fluids in these items that “suspend” the motorcycle frame off of the ground.

T

Tappets : Small metal slugs between the cam and the pushrod or rocker arm.

Telelever system : The most successful alternate front suspension, made by BMW, which takes the shock-absorption function of a hydraulic fork and transfers it to a shock absorber located behind the steering head.

Thumper : Bikes with large-displacement, single-cylinder, four-stroke engines.

Top end : The upper part of the engine, which contains the pistons, cylinders, and valve gear, and the induction system consists of the apparati that mix an air-and-fuel charge and inject it into the combustion chamber, located in the top end.

Torque : A twisting force, and in a motorcycle, it is a measure of the leverage the engine exerts on the rear wheel.

Touring bike : A bike equipped for longer rides with fairings and lockable saddle bags.

Traction : A tire’s ability to grip the road.

Travel : The distance that suspension components, the forks and shocks, move up and down when the bike rides over bumps.

Twin spar-type frame : A bike frame with two steel or aluminum “spars” (flat beams) sandwiched around the sides of the engine.

Two up : A term for carrying a passenger on your motorcycle.

Two-stroke engine : An engine (also called a “stroker”) whose power cycle consists of just two movements, or strokes: The piston moves down, drawing in the fuel-air charge, and then up, combusting the charge.

U

Unitized transmission : A transmission (often referred to as a “unit transmission”) that is an integral part of the engine’s bottom end.

Universal Japanese Motorcycle (UJM) : During the 1970s, the Japanese became so identified with the four-cylinder, standard-style motorcycle that this term was coined to describe them.

V

V-four : An engine with four cylinders arranged in a V-shaped configuration.

V-twin : A two-cylinder engine with its cylinders placed in a V shape.

Valves : Devices consisting of metal stems with flat disks on one end that open and
close to let fuel charges in and exhaust gases out.

Valve guides : Metal tubes that house the valves.

Valve train : The system of valves that let the fuel charges in and let the exhaust
gases out.

The V-Fours (V4) Engine

When Honda introduced its water-cooled V-four engine bikes for the 1982 model year, pundits predicted the demise of the inline four. It seemed reasonable at the time. These engines have exceptional power characteristics, providing good torque figures and more than adequate horsepower. Plus they are one of the smoothest engine designs in existence.

This engine design has become something of a standard - powering a variety of sportbikes, cruisers, and touring bikes - but it never came close to replacing the inline four. That was probably due to the expense of manufacturing such a complex engine design rather than any inherent flaws with the concept. In service, these have proven to be remarkably reliable motorcycles.

" A V-four engine is an engine with four cylinders arranged in a V-shaped configuration."

If you are in the market for a used motorcycle, a bike with a V-four engine is a safe bet. These bikes have been nearly indestructible. I have a friend who has 125,000 miles on his 1985 Honda 700 Magna as I write this. By the time you read it, he will probably hit 150,000 miles.

Inline Six Engine

For a few years in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, a few manufacturers fooled around with inline six-cylinder motorcycle engines, but these proved to be oddities, footnotes in the motorcycle history books. The odds of you stumbling across one of these beasties by chance are slim; most such machines are now the property of collectors.

"An inline six-cylinder engine is an engine with six cylinders in a row."

The Italian company Benelli produced a 750cc six-cylinder bike, but like many Italian bikes, this is one you’ll probably only see in pictures. More common were the big Sixes produced by Honda and Kawasaki. These were functional motorcycles, but both were victims of their own excess. The width of those six-cylinders just proved to be more bulk than would comfortably fit down in the engine bay, and handling suffered, especially on the water-cooled Kawasaki, which weighed nearly as much as a small car. And if four-cylinder engines are complex to maintain, sixes are absolute nightmares.

The Gold Wing - Flat-Six Engine

The engine Honda uses in its Gold Wing touring bikes is so unique, it doesn’t fit into any other category. The only thing comparable to the same inline six-cylinder version is the engine Porsche's uses in its 911-series. This is a flat, Boxer-type engine, with four or six liquid cooled cylinders, rather than two air-cooled cylinders, like BMW uses. The flat-four and flat-six-cylinder engines used in Honda’s Gold Wings are called flat because their cylinders are arranged in a flat, opposing configuration.

"When Honda introduced its Gold Wing in 1975, it created a new class of motorcycle : the luxury tourer."

These are the smoothest engines used in motorcycles, period, and are a major part of the Gold Wing’s appeal to the touring crowd. They also have a fairly centralized mass, which makes the entire motorcycle easier to maneuver. I’ve seen Gold Wing riders whip their bikes around as if they were riding sportbikes instead of ultimate behemoths weighing twice what the average sportbike weighs.

The Americans were huge fans of longitudinal in-line-four configurations, but it was Flemish arms manufacturer FN that was first to produce an Inline Four Motorcycles in Europe back in 1905.

Pre-1920s, a great many companies opted to try the stretched Inline Four Engine layout, including Indian, Excelsior, Henderson and Cleveland. In the UK, Wilkinson (the forerunner of Wilkinson Sword) produced an 850cc model with this configuration called the TMC, which was considered a luxury touring product.


The onset of war saw restrictions kill off production in 1916 and although Wilkinson continued to develop the engine post-war, it never built another motorcycle. In a similar fashion, Vauxhall famously dipped into the bike world when it commissioned the production of six luxury prototype motorcycles in 1922. In the end, only two were built and Vauxhall decided not to pursue its motorcycling interests any further.

When people refer to Inline Fours Engine now, they typically mean across the frame fours (transversely mounted, not longitudinally), such as Honda’s 1969 CB750.

The Inline-Four Engine Revival : Honda CB750 !

The effect Honda’s CB750 Inline Four Engine had on the motorcycling world can be compared to the effect the introduction of Microsoft’s Windows operating platform had on the personal-computer industry. Sure, the old DOS system retained a few die-hard adherents, as did the British motorcycle industry, but just as the vast majority of computer users prefer Windows to DOS, the vast majority of the motorcycling public wanted four-cylinder bikes.

Although twin-cylinder bikes have experienced a resurgence in popularity in the past several years, riders still want four-cylinder motorcycles, which makes sense: The benefits of four-cylinder bikes can’t be denied.




The primary benefits of a Inline four-cylinder engine in a motorcycle are smoothness and a capability to run at higher RPMs than a comparable twin. (Higher RPMs is why almost all sportbikes use four-cylinder engines.)

Inline Fours tend to make their power higher up in the power band than twins and produce less torque at lower RPMs, but all but the most highly-tuned Fours (such as the Suzuki's GSX-R 600 or Honda's CBR600RR) make adequate torque down low. Some Fours aimed at a more general audience, such as Suzuki’s 1200 Bandit, make more torque than many twins.

The downside of Inline four - cylinder motorcycles is that the engines tend to be rather bulky, although designers are working to rectify this situation. For example, Yamaha has moved the water pump inside the engine cases on its latest big-bore sportbike in an attempt to make the engine more compact. These engines are also more complex than twins and singles. More parts means more expensive maintenance. The odds are you’ll end up with a four-cylinder engine, not because it’s better (or worse) than any other type, but because it is such a common design. This is especially true if you buy a used bike.

Eventually, the British responded to the Japanese invasion and introduced a new engine design, the inline triple. In many respects, this was just a Speed Twin with an extra cylinder grafted on, but it featured some unique characteristics, notably its compactness. British twins gained their reputation for being fine-handling motorcycles in large part because their compact engines allowed designers to tuck everything in, leaving very few hard parts to scrape the pavement during high-speed antics. With the triples, designers went to great lengths to retain that compactness.

An inline triple is an engine with three cylinders placed in a row.

Although promising, these bikes had too many problems to save the British motorcycle industry. Anyone who wants to learn how not to conduct business would do well to study the development of the Triumph Trident and BSA Rocket 3. A design firm with no experience in motorcycles was hired to style the bikes, resulting in bizarre-looking machines. Mechanically, the new bikes also failed. Although the engines were powerful, they proved unreliable in service, victims of underdevelopment.

After the styling of the new bikes was universally rejected by motorcycle buyers, Triumph redesigned the Trident (BSA had gone out of business by that time) and gradually worked out the mechanical bugs, but it was a waste of time. By then, Honda had already introduced its CB750 four-cylinder bike, and in doing so, effectively stripped the British of any influence in the motorcycle market.

In 1923, Max Friz, an engineer working for BMW Motorrad, built a motorcycle engine, the R32, a 500cc opposed twin, using basic principles still in use today. Afterwards, This engine configuration earned the nickname "Boxer" because the pistons thrust outward, away from each other, like fists.

This was not the first opposed engine, but Friz’s execution was unique, and the effectiveness of his design makes BMW’s Boxer engines popular to this day. By opposing each other, the pistons cancel out primary vibration, creating a remarkably smooth twin-cylinder engine. And by locating the pistons on the side of the engine, Fritz placed them in the cooling airstream, leading to a cool-running, and thus long-lasting, engine. It’s not uncommon to find BMWs with 200,000 or more miles showing on the odometer.


The success of Friz’s design was not lost on manufacturers from other countries. During World War II, Harley-Davidson used his Boxer design for a military motorcycle, and in 1941, Ural began manufacturing a Beemer clone in Russia. Harley ditched this idea soon after World War II, but Ural is still at it, and you can now buy Ural motorcycles in the United States.

Many people find that the Boxer design offers an ideal compromise between twin-cylinder torque and multi cylinder smoothness. Like the V-twin, a Boxer’s primary characteristic is abundant torque rather than massive peak horsepower. This torque is usually found a bit higher in the RPM range than a V-twin’s, but it still comes on early enough to be useful in the real world. In return, Boxers tend to have more top speed than V-twins. That, combined with the engine design’s inherent smoothness, allows Boxer riders to cruise for extended periods at elevated speeds. You can get yourself thrown in jail on a Beemer without much effort on your part.

The V-twin design found widespread support even in the early days of motorcycle development, largely because it fit the shape of the bicycle-style frames used on motorcycles at the time.

By 1907, Harley and the Davidson boys displayed a prototype V-twin engine for their motorcycles. When Philip Conrad Vincent (the maker of Vincent Motorcycles) decided to add another cylinder to his Comet and create the first Rapide, the two cylinders together formed a traditional V. And when the Japanese got serious about building American-style cruisers, their engine of choice was the V-twin.

Modern manufacturers build V-twin motorcycles for a variety of reasons; some are practical and objective, while others, like tradition and style, are purely subjective.

" A V-twin engine is a two-cylinder engine with its cylinders splayed out in a V shape. "

V-twin engines vary widely in their characteristics. Some designs, like Harley-Davidson’s 45-degree V-twin, vibrate excessively. Some Harley touring models, as well as the Dyna Glide series, compensate for that vibration with elaborate rubber-mounting systems. Other models, like the Sportsters and Softails, just shake away, rider be damned. The reason for this involves the crankshaft design used in all Harley V-twins, but the vibration is also caused by the narrow angle of the V.

Other V-twin cruisers use narrow-angle V engines but also use some sort of system for reducing vibration. Honda uses a staggered crankshaft, which fools the engine into thinking the V angle is a wider 90 degrees. Other manufacturers, like Kawasaki, use heavy counterbalancers.

One characteristic common to most V-twin engines (and all successful ones) is ample torque, especially in the larger models. Riders of high-revving sportbikes often comment on the lack of peak horsepower V-twin bikes usually display, but they’re missing the point. While V-twins usually give away a lot of power up at the top of the power band (which, in the real world, means at triple-digit speeds), they make up for it by offering tremendous usable power at lower RPMs.

On a cruiser with a large V-twin engine, you can probably forget about riding all day at 145 miles per hour, but when you whack open the throttle at lower speeds (like the 65 to 70 miles per hour you’ll usually find yourself riding), you are rewarded with jetlike thrust that sets you back in the saddle.

In 1927, a young man in Britain named Edward Turner, working alone in his own shop, designed and built a 350cc single-cylinder motorcycle. The British motorcycle industry took note of this achievement, and he soon landed a job designing bikes. By 1936, he’d worked his way up to General Manager and Chief Designer at Triumph Engineering Co.

In July of 1937, Turner introduced the 500cc Speed Twin, which featured a 27-horsepower parallel-twin engine that formed the basis of most Triumph motorcycle engines well into the 1980s. This engine, and its imitators from companies like BSA and Norton, became the power plant of choice for sporting motorcycles for decades to come.

A parallel-twin engine is a two-cylinder engine with its cylinders placed side-by-side in an upright position.

Because of the design of its crankshaft, along with certain dynamic problems inherent in the parallel-twin design, these engines vibrated much more than a Boxer engine, but they vibrated less than a V-twin. Plus, they were light and powerful for their day. Their compact size enabled engineers to create compact motorcycles that could run circles around the big Harleys and Indians of that era, and their power output nearly equaled that of the big twins, which displaced as much as 1200cc.

Although the parallel twin has long since ceased being the power plant of choice for superbikes, the design still has enough appeal to keep it in production. Modern versions, with redesigned crankshafts and counter balancers to tame vibration, power a variety of mid-sized bikes from manufacturers like Suzuki and Kawasaki. Kawasaki produces parallel twins in both cruiser and sportbike form. Any of these motorcycles make ideal first bikes. I’m especially fond of Kawasaki’s EX500/Ninja 500 series : these are comfortable, good-handling, nimble motorcycles with enough power to keep a rider amused for decades.

The parallel twin seems to be The parallel twin seems to be making a comeback in the hard-core sportbike market, too. Yamaha produces the TDX for the European market with an 850cc parallel-twin engine. I haven’t sampled the bike, but its predecessor, the TDM850, had what may be my all-time-favorite motorcycle engine. That bike is no longer imported into the United States, but if you can find a good used TDM, buy it. Also, the Italian company Laverda recently began importing a line of parallel-twin sportbikes that looks promising.

Anyone who has ever added oil to a car has experience with four-stroke engines; the vast majority of roadgoing vehicles ever to turn a wheel on U.S. streets have four-stroke engines.

The four stroke gets its name from the number of strokes the piston makes during each power cycle (each series of events that produces power). The piston first moves down, drawing in the fuel charge (intake stroke), then moves up (compression stroke), at which time the fuel-and-air charge ignites and burns, pushing the piston down (power stroke). The fourth stroke occurs when the piston moves back up, forcing out the burned gasses (exhaust stroke).

The four-stroke engine is sometimes called the Otto cycle, in honor of its inventor, Nikolaus August Otto. It’s called a “four stroke” because the piston makes four strokes, or movements along the length of the cylinder, per cycle.

The Single Cylinder Engine

The single, the most basic of engines, once powered most motorcycles on the road. In the old days, motorcycles were such problematic beasts, the general philosophy held that the fewer moving parts you had, the less the chance those parts would break. And what could have fewer moving parts than a motorcycle with but one cylinder?

As designs and materials advanced, along with production techniques, manufacturers were able to create ever more complex motorcycles, with two, three, four, six, and even eight cylinders. Generally speaking, the more cylinders you have, the smoother the engine runs. Clever designers have produced twin-cylinder engines that run almost as smoothly as four-cylinder engines, but there is no way to make a single cylinder do so, and as a result, single-cylinder streetbikes have steadily lost popularity since the very beginning of the sport.

Today’s big singles use counterbalancers (weights inside the engine) to cancel out some of the vibration to a certain degree, but you can’t take the thump completely out of a thumper (a bike with a large-displacement, single-cylinder, four-stroke engine, so called because of the thumping sound of its exhaust).

Another drawback of single-cylinder engines is that they don’t make a lot of power. But singles have advantages, too. Because they have few parts, they tend to be light power plants (engines), which is why they are so popular in the big dual sports. And while they may not generate a lot of power, they still provide satisfying amounts of torque.

Suppose that you are riding a BMW F650ST single. Beside you, your companion rides a Suzuki GSX-R 600, a four-cylinder bike that makes more than twice as much horsepower as your Beemer, but roughly the same torque. You pass the city limits, and the speed limit rises to 65. Say, for the sake of argument, that you’re both running at roughly 2500 RPMs. You both whack open the throttle at the same time. You’ll pull away first-even though the Suzuki has twice as much horsepower - because at 2500 RPMs, you have about 34 foot pounds of torque available to you, while the Suzuki only has about 22 foot pounds of torque available (torque, the force the engine exerts on the rear wheel, is measured in foot pounds).

Of course, within a few seconds, the Suzuki will have rocketed away from you when all that horsepower kicks in, but by then you are both going faster than the powers that be will allow anyway. And should the Suzuki rider drop the shifter down a few gears, she will have left you behind from the moment you hit the throttle. Either way, she will have accelerated to go-to-jail speeds quicker than you can process the sound of the sirens on Officer Bob’s police cruiser as he begins high-speed pursuit.

The point of this hypothetical scenario is that while single-cylinder bikes offer less overall power than multicylinder bikes, the power they do offer is often more usable in the real world, a world populated by traffic lights, stray dogs, pedestrians, senior citizens, and lawenforcement officials. The same is true of many twincylinder motorcycles.

This is one of the last Japanese 2 stroke (road-legal) in the world. 2015 - Kawasaki Ninja 150, or also known as Kawasaki ZX-150.

With the exception of Honda, Japanese manufacturers originally invaded the U.S. market with small, two-stroke motorcycles.

Japan produced mainly strokers, as two-stroke engines are called, ranging from small, 50cc mopeds to Suzuki’s GT750 and Kawasaki’s infamous three-cylinder 750cc H2. Although some of these bikes continued in production until the late 1970s, by the early 1970s, it was clear that increasingly stringent air-quality rules would make the strokers extinct, at least in the United States. Other than Yamaha, which continued to develop its popular RD series of strokers throughout the decade, most manufacturers quit developing strokers for the U.S. market. By the early 1980s, you couldn’t buy a brand-new street-legal two stroke in the United States.


Many of us grew up riding these fast, lightweight, cheap machines, and our memories of them are probably clouded by all the fun we had on them (and perhaps all that exhaust smoke has damaged our memories).

Strokers are still out there, although they become tougher to find every year. Their inherent unreliability accounts for much of the reason they are not as plentiful as their four-stroke counterparts. Because these bikes relied on the proper amount of oil being mixed in with their fuel, they could easily be starved of lubrication, leading to a seized engine. Most of the later bikes had automatic oiling systems, but they still seized their engines more frequently than four-stroke engines.

Yamaha was the last Japanese company to import a stroker streetbike into the United States with its popular RD/RZ series.

Even if you can find one intact, strokers tend not to be practical motorcycles. They generate a lot of power for their size, but that power usually comes on only at the very top of the RPM range. Often, this power hits like a switch has been turned on. Before that switch is turned on, these bikes can hardly get out of their own way. I’ve found it takes a special type of lunatic to make good use of a 2 strokers, a crazed motorcyclist who rides with the throttle wide open and controls his or her speed with the shifter. Every ride is a Grand Prix event for these folks, even a simple trip to the local convenience store. While you may be just the sort of lunatic I’m describing, this is not a good way to learn to ride.